How Beyonce's 'Homecoming' Pays Off For Coachella Promoter AEG
How the concert promoter and Queen Bey share in streaming revenues, licensing fees and ticket sales
Beyonce made history again yesterday (April 17) as the first Coachella headliner in the event's 20-year history to release a full-length film of their performance.
Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé was conceptualized by the "Crazy in Love" singer and her creative team around her 2018 performance at the 125,000-person event, which is owned and produced by AEG's Goldenvoice. Concert footage for the two-hour documentary was filmed by Parkwood and AEG video teams and directed by Garry Odom. After it was shot, an 11-person post-production team led by executive producer Parkwood Entertainment spent a year editing and mixing the film before selling it to Netflix.
So, who in the above group makes money from the film, already considered to be one of the decade's best concert films? Everyone. A source with knowledge of the making of the film tells Billboard that both AEG and Beyoncé have an agreement that allows each to earn revenue from the film.
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Typically, artists use their own film crews for live concert videos and most venues will waive their flat location fee if the venue's name is included in the title of the release. But because Goldenvoice records, edits and archives the bulk of the performances that take place at Coachella, the promoter jointly owns the performance footage with headlining artists including Beyoncé, the source says. To create Homecoming, Beyoncé then licensed AEG's stake in the footage in a separate agreement, which allowed Parkwood to produce and sell the film.
Beyoncé's camp didn't ink the distribution deal with Netflix until after the two concerts took place, but they "had an idea they were going to use the footage for something and took great care when shooting the show," the source said, telling Billboard that Parkwood "directed everything on the video screens. Unlike most artists, [Beyoncé's team] went into incredible detail for her Coachella shoot."
It's unclear how much Netflix paid Parkwood for Homecoming -- we know the streaming service paid Dave Chappelle $35 million for two comedy specials released in 2017 -- and since Netflix doesn't release most viewership data, there's no way to know how many people tuned in yesterday. Judging from the reaction on Twitter and the huge promotional push from Netflix, it's safe to assume tens of millions of people will see the movie.
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Any money made from the film would be in addition to the $8 million to $12 million that Beyonce was paid to headline the festival, which grossed $114 million in ticket sales in 2017 for AEG and Goldenvoice (2018 figures were not released). The promoter also brings in millions on food and beverage, camping and lodging, sponsorships, licensing and the advertisements sold against the livestream of weekend 1 on Youtube, adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
While the details of financial arrangements between AEG and Beyoncé were not released, the source tells Billboard "all sides are pleased with the outcome."
How Beyonce's 'Homecoming' Pays Off For Coachella Promoter AEG
Coachella
Robert Lloyd - Contact Reporter
Television Critic
Saturday night, my Twitter feed having filled up with the hashtag #beychella and a link to a live feed of Beyoncé Knowles' Coachella debut being offered, I went in, out of interest, and stayed out of — what? "Admiration" would be too weak a word, "astonishment" would underrate a performer who habitually sets the bar high and clears it. Anyway, there was no question of turning it off, leaving my chair or glancing away.
I used to attend Coachella in the perspiring flesh when single-day tickets were still sold and the crowds were half what they've become. This time, I watched in the room where I write, on the screen on which these words are appearing as I type. (They are no Beyoncé.) Yet it was very much an emotional, visceral, virtually communal experience. (My wife was watching over my shoulder; I was in an actual audience of two.)
Coachella livestreams much of what it puts onstage. The festival reliably sells out both its identical weekends; offering the rest of the world a window onto the grounds during its first weekend costs nothing in sales, and only increases the cachet of the event. There is a kind of public service element too, if you want to be generous about the promoters' intentions. Not everyone can manage or afford to go to Coachella, the only festival where these sorts of major statements are likely to take place. But most everyone who would want to can click into the feed.
“Historical” is a word that has been been much used to describe this performance, before and after the fact. (And it was, literally: “Coachella, thank you for allowing me to be the first black woman to headline,” the singer said, as if she had been a supplicant and not in fact the prize.) Had this been an ordinary television broadcast, commercials would have preceded it for months; billboards would have told you when and where to tune in. You would have had to cover your ears and eyes in order not to know it was happening.
The camera knew where to be and when to be there; one never felt something essential was being missed.
As it is, they will be watching Saturday's performance in 5,000 years if anyone is around to watch it and eyes are still a thing. But seeing it in real time, even if not in the real space, mattered. Far from the event, there was still a sense of occasion, of a shared moment in a shared space — and much of this had to do with the quality of the camerawork and the intelligence of the direction.
When Martin Scorsese put a camera on tracks in 1976 to shoot "The Last Waltz," it felt like nothing we'd seen in a concert film. But successful innovations become bad habits.
Typically, nowadays, the camera and cutting create the action when live music is put onscreen — zooming in, zooming out, zipping from one side of the stage to another, from the back of the room to the front, like a Go-Pro attached to a flying monkey, never lingering on any shot more than a few songs. This has become a kind of standard, sadly; it has become the way we understand that something is exciting. (Admittedly, not every pop act gives you much to look at.)
Or it can be underdone — "camera one, camera two, move in camera three" sort of direction, duly recording an event without supporting or amplifying it, without getting to the heart of what makes it beautiful. And to be sure, often what the camera reports is strong enough to speak for itself. But a brilliant performance can also be dimmed by poor camerawork or dull direction. Many artists commemorate concerts or concert tours; few are much to look at.
None of this was the case with Beyoncé's Saturday set.
Like a Superbowl halftime show, or an Olympics opening ceremony, the performance was staged both for the crowd on the field and the crowd watching remotely. And if not every angle, move and cut was arranged beforehand, the key moments had clearly been mapped for maximum effect. (By her own people, I would assume, and not Coachella’s.) Nothing else I’ve seen streaming from the festival has had, visually, the same level of organization, intention or sensitivity — indeed few concert films are up to the level this achieved, seemingly on the fly.
It began with a tracking shot — out on the walkway that extended onto the field — moving forward to a close up of one of her female drummers, forward again as dancers gave way to reveal the star as Egyptian queen, and then backward as they processed to the stage. The camera knew where to be and when to be there; one never felt something essential was being missed. When the camera moved, it was for a reason — to follow the action, not to stand in for it.
It was a spectacle but a spectacle made up primarily of humans doing spectacular things, individually, in combination and in unison. (The rest was mostly done with lights.) From afar, you could make out individuals in a yellow-clad cast of musicians and dancers reported to number 100; close up, you could watch individual strands of the star’s crimped hair borne aloft on the Coachella Valley breeze. Shots of her out on the runway, in the midst of the moving crowd, had the clarity and detail and implied scale (even on a mid-sized computer monitor) of an 18th century history painting, where many smaller stories play out within and alongside a bigger one. As befits a performer who seems at once more than human and only human, it was at once grand and intimate, powerful and empowering.
I’m glad I was there, even from here.
Los Angeles Times
A TV critic on watching Beyonce's Coachella performance at home